http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges The Blog of the Delphi Product Manager Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:07:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en-US What is the Delphi component that you can’t live without? The on demand replay for the "Extreme Cross-Platform .NET with Delphi Prism 2011" webinar is now available at http://forms.embarcadero.com/forms/AMUSCA1006DelphiPrism20116-2. I’ve always been a big Jeff Duntemann fan, because he’s ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/06/14/39454 If there is a bedrock, bottom line, everyone-should-follow-it-all-the-time rule in programming it is “The DRY Principle” – Don’t Repeat Yourself.  This simple rule states that you should write code once and only once, and that you shouldn’t allow the same code to be used all over the place.  Or, as ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/06/09/39453 One of the cool features of Delphi Prism 2011 is the built-right-into-the-language support for Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP).  John Moshakis has a nice blog post giving an example of exactly the kind of things that Aspects can to do make your code cleaner and easier to maintain:  ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/06/08/39452 The topic of newsgroup participation came up in our Delphi.non-technical group, and I mentioned that it appears that more people seem to be using StackOverflow to get answers to their questions.   Craig Stuntz turned around and in his own inimitable way, proved that such is the case.  ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/06/04/39451 Delphi Prism 2011 is now available for purchase.  There are some very cool features in it, the biggest of which is integration into Visual Studio 2010 and complete support for the .Net 4.0 framework.  It also includes CodeSite Delphi Prism Edition, which gives you an amazing view into your code.  ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/06/02/39449 I had occasion to write a little routine called CoinFlip: function CoinFlip: Boolean; begin Result := Random > 0.5; end; I don't know why I found it mildly amusing.  And I bet someone will tell me that it is slightly biased in one direction.  Because it is.  Anyway, thought you all ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/05/30/39448 DataRage 2 is going on right now, and it is not too late to get involved. Delphi Prism 2011 will be generally available very soon, and Marc Hoffman has a good rundown on what you’ll get in this significant release.  My favorite part is ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/05/26/39447 This guy on StackOverflow has a question about the best desktop development platform.  Maybe you guys have some suggestions for him. Did I post this link to an article in SDTimes about Delphi Prism 2011?  One of the cool additions to the product ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/05/24/39446 “The board "highly recommended" switching to Pascal/Delphi because it is stable and was designed to teach programming and problem solving.” Cary Jensen has an interesting survey up on his blog, asking about how much you use the “non-core” features of RAD Studio.  Now this ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/05/12/39445 The next principle for the “Pretty Good Practices” we’ll discuss is this notion:  Whenever possible and as much as possible, put functionality in a class --  preferably a class that can be easily unit tested, reused, and separated from any user interface. TextScrubber demonstrates this via the use of ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/05/05/39444 Delphi Prism 2011 is coming soon, and you can read more about it at SDTimes.  Or maybe you are more of an InfoWorld guy and want to read their article about it.  If you are a RemObjects customer, you might be interested in ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/30/39442 Okay, hopefully by now you’ve read the introduction of this series, and you’ve downloaded (or better yet, pulled from source control) the latest version of TextScrubber and given it a once over.  In this installment, I’m going to discuss the file structure of the project and why I did things ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/28/39435 Okay, so for this first installment, I’ll be illustrating one of my core principles for developing applications:  All my code of any importance at all goes under source control.  All of it. I’m all by myself – why should I use source control? We ask about source control use on the annual ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/23/39416 A while back someone (I can’t remember who, sadly, sorry to the person who made the suggestion…) suggested that someone do a series of articles about “the best practices on how to develop a Delphi application”.  That’s a good idea.  There are a lot of ways to do things, and ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/19/39404 SamContacts is a “Simple Address Manager” that enables you to quickly and easily manage your contact information. You can read more, or take a quick tour on their website.  Share This | Email this page to a friend http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/16/39403 Delphi Prism is on Channel 9.  David I give a quick rundown on Delphi Prism working in Visual Studio 2010.  Joe Meyer alerted me to a German guy who has done a bunch of Delphi tutorials (in German…).  Looks pretty good.  (And while ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/16/39402 Okay, first up:  I’ve put the tests and updates for DateUtils.pas on CodeCentral.  So far, I’ve been writing tests in a pretty organized way.  But I write each individual test, one at a time.  I often end up writing a lot of “piece-meal” tests by hand.  I end ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/15/39401 Okay, so after that last post, and after all the fixes that I did, things have settled down a little bit.  I thought I’d take advantage of this interlude to tell you some interesting things about TDateTime in Delphi, because along the way here, I have discovered a thing or ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/14/39396 Okay, so when we last left off, IncMillisecond was still failing in certain circumstances.  Let’s take a look at that.  Note, too, that I have this crazy notion that if you have a function called IncMillisecond, then it should be able to, you know, increment a millisecond. :-) Here is the ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/13/39391 Okay, so when I left you hanging in the last post, I promised I’d explain what was up with IncMillisecond.  But before I do that, I have to explain a bunch of stuff about TDateTime. And as it turns out, we’ll have to take a detour, and we won’t exactly ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/07/39380 First, an admin note:  I’ve adjusted the color of strings in my code.   I was optimizing the colors for reading on my blog proper as opposed to the main site (hadn’t even thought of it, actually, sorry.), and someone pointed out that the colors weren’t working on the main site ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/04/01/39379 Andreano has a new blog, or at least it is new to me – just found it today.  He has two items there that caught my eye: His RADTweet project – a Delphi-based Twitter client ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/31/39378 Okay, things have settled down again, and it is time to get back to my adventure in TDateTime and DateUtils.pas. When we last left off, I had started at the top of DateUtils, and just started working my way down.  I had written some tests for DateOf and TimeOf, ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/30/39374 As you may know, we are moving to a new office very nearby where we are now.  We got to visit the new digs today.  Friday is moving day, and we’ll be in the new place for a great new start on Monday morning.  I’m excited – ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/23/39373 I’m a big Joel Spolsky fan, but I wasn’t too impressed when I read that he went out of his way to steal Pascal’s with statement and add it to VBA for Excel, well….. Cary Jensen is doing a series of Webinars on Migrating ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/18/39372 David I is doing another webinar:  RAD/AJAX-based Web Application Development using RAD Studio 2010.  He is giving it three different times on Thursday, March 18, 2010, so no matter where you are in the world, you should be able to tune in. Anders ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/17/39371 First of all, thanks for the help improving the CreateRandomDate function.  I confess that I didn’t spend enough time thinking on it, and I’ll also confess that you guys are way smarter than I am.  ;-)  I’ll post the “updated” version for your perusal in a separate post.  ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/16/39370 Okay, so I’m a Development Manager. My job is to see to the health, welfare, productivity, effectiveness, and proper tasking of a big chunk of the RAD Studio development team. I share these duties with the excellent and capable Mike Devery.  I mainly manage the guys that work on the ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/10/39369 If you are a registered user of Delphi 2010, you can now download a digital copy of Marco Cantu’s new book, Delphi 2010 Handbook. (From Marco’s Site: “The book covers all the new features of Delphi 2010 for Win32, from Extended RTTI to new IDE features, from ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/09/39368 I was talking with a customer yesterday.  It was a pretty typical conversation – they have a big investment in Delphi, with hundreds of thousands of lines of code.  They had built a major application for a major business using DataSnap and dbGo (formerly ADOExpress).  They had started to build ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/nickhodges/2010/03/05/39367